Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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`How far was it to where Starlight was?'

`Long way. Took me all day to come.'

`Had he been there long?'

`Yes; had a camp there.'

`Anybody else with him?'

`Three more men from this side.'

`Did the old man say we were to come at once?'

`Yes, or leave it alone -- which you liked.'

Then he shut his eyes, and his mouth too, and was soon as fast asleep
as if he never intended to wake under a week.

`What shall we do, Jim?' I said; `go or not?'

`If you leave it to me,' says Jim, `I say, don't go. It's only some other
cross cattle or horse racket. We're bound to be nobbled some day.
Why not cut it now, and stick to the square thing? We couldn't do better
than we're doing now. It's rather slow, but we'll have a good cheque
by Christmas.'

`I'm half a mind to tell Warrigal to go back and say we're not on,' I said.
`Lots of other chaps would join without making any bones about it.'

`Hoo -- hoo -- hoo -- hoo,' sounded once more the night-bird
from the black tree outside.

`D---- the bird! I believe he's the devil in the shape of a mopoke!
And yet I don't like Starlight to think we're afraid. He and the old man
might be in a fix and want help. Suppose we toss up?'

`All right,' says Jim, speaking rather slowly.

You couldn't tell from his face or voice how he felt about it;
but I believe now -- more than that, he let on once to me --
that he was awfully cut up about my changing, and thought we were just in
for a spell of straightforward work, and would stash the other thing
for good and all.

We put the fire together. It burnt up bright for a bit.
I pulled out a shilling.

`If it's head we go, Jim; if it's woman, we stay here.'

I sent up the coin; we both bent over near the fire to look at it.

The head was uppermost.

`Hoo -- hoo -- hoo -- hoo,' came the night-bird's harsh croak.

There was a heavyish stake on that throw, if we'd only known.
Only ruin -- only death. Four men's lives lost, and three women
made miserable for life.

Jim and I looked at one another. He smiled and opened the door.

`It's all the fault of that cursed owl, I believe,' he said;
`I'll have his life if he waits till it's daylight.
We must be off early and get up our horses. I know what a long day
for Warrigal and that ambling three-cornered devil of his means --
seventy or eighty miles, if it's a yard.'

We slept sound enough till daybreak, and COULD SLEEP then,
whatever was on the card. As for Jim, he slept like a baby always
once he turned in. When I woke I got up at once. It was half dark;
there was a little light in the east. But Warrigal had been out before me,
and was leading his horse up to the hut with the hobbles in his hand.

Our horses were not far off; one of them had a bell on.
Jim had his old brown, and I had a chestnut that I thought nearly as good.
We weren't likely to have anything to ride that wasn't
middlin' fast and plucky. Them that overhauled us would have to ride for it.
We saddled up and took our blankets and what few things
we couldn't do without. The rest stopped in the hut for any one
that came after us. We left our wages, too, and never asked for 'em
from that day to this. A trifle like that didn't matter
after what we were going in for. More's the pity.

As we moved off my horse propped once or twice, and Warrigal looked at us
in a queer side sort of way and showed his teeth a bit -- smile nor laugh
it wasn't, only a way he had when he thought he knew more than we did.

`My word! your horse's been where the feed's good. We're goin'
a good way to-day. I wonder if they'll be as flash as they are now.'

`They'll carry us wherever that three-cornered mule of yours
will shuffle to to-night,' said Jim. `Never you mind about them.
You ride straight, and don't get up to any monkey tricks, or, by George,
I'll straighten you, so as you'll know better next time.'

`You know a lot, Jim Marston,' said the half-caste, looking at him
with his long dark sleepy eyes which I always thought were like
a half-roused snake's. `Never mind, you'll know more one of these days.
We'd better push on.'

He went off at a hand-gallop, and then pulled back into a long darting
kind of canter, which Bilbah thought was quite the thing for a journey
-- anyhow, he never seemed to think of stopping it -- went on mile after mile
as if he was not going to pull up this side of sundown. A wiry brute,
always in condition, was this said Bilbah, and just at this time
as hard as nails. Our horses had been doing nothing lately,
and being on good young feed had, of course, got fat, and were rather soft.

After four or five miles they began to blow. We couldn't well pull up;
the ground was hard in places and bad for tracking. If we went on at the pace
we should cook our horses. As soon as we got into a bit of open
I raced up to him.

`Now, look here, Warrigal,' I said, `you know why you're doing this,
and so do I. Our horses are not up to galloping fifty or sixty miles on end
just off a spell and with no work for months. If you don't pull up
and go our pace I'll knock you off your horse.'

`Oh! you're riled!' he said, looking as impudent as he dared,
but slackening all the same. `Pulled up before if I knowed your horses
were getting baked. Thought they were up to anything, same as you and Jim.'

`So they are. You'll find that one of these days. If there's work ahead
you ought to have sense enough not to knock smoke out of fresh horses
before we begin.'

`All right. Plenty of work to do, my word. And Starlight said,
"Tell 'em to be here to-day if they can." I know he's afraid of some one
follerin' up our tracks, as it is.'

`That's all right, Warrigal; but you ride steady all the same,
and don't be tearing away through thick timber, like a mallee scrubber
that's got into the open and sees the devil behind him
until he can get cover again. We shall be there to-night
if it's not a hundred miles, and that's time enough.'

We did drop in for a long day, and no mistake. We only pulled up
for a short halt in the middle, and Warrigal's cast-iron pony was off again,
as if he was bound right away for the other side of the continent. However,
though we were not going slow either, but kept up a reasonable fast pace,
it must have been past midnight when we rode into Starlight's camp;
very glad Jim and I were to see the fire -- not a big one either.
We had been taking it pretty easy, you see, for a month or two,
and were not quite so ready for an eighty-mile ride as if we had been
in something like training. The horses had had enough of it, too,
though neither of them would give in, not if we'd ridden 'em
twenty mile farther. As for Warrigal's Bilbah he was near as fresh
as when he started, and kept tossin' his head an' amblin' and pacin' away
as if he was walkin' for a wager round a ring in a show-yard.

As we rode up we could see a gunyah made out of boughs,
and a longish wing of dogleg fence, made light but well put together.
As soon as we got near enough a dog ran out and looked as if he was going
to worry us; didn't bark either, but turned round and waited for us
to get off.

`It's old Crib,' said Jim, with a big laugh; `blest if it ain't.
Father's somewhere handy. They're going to take up a back block
and do the thing regular: Marston, Starlight, and Company --
that's the fakement. They want us out to make dams or put up
a woolshed or something. I don't see why they shouldn't, as well as
Crossman and Fakesley. It's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,
as far as being on the square goes. Depend upon it, dad's turned over
a new leaf.'

`Do you fellows want anything to eat?' said a voice that I knew
to be Starlight's. `If you do there's tea near the fire,
and some grub in that flour bag. Help yourselves and hobble out your horses.
We'll settle matters a bit in the morning. Your respected parent's abed
in his own camp, and it's just as well not to wake him, unless you want
his blessing ere you sleep.'

We went with Starlight to his gunyah. A path led through a clump of pines,
so thick that a man might ride round it and never dream there was anything
but more pines inside. A clear place had been made in the sandhill,
and a snug crib enough rigged with saplings and a few sheets of bark.
It was neat and tidy, like everything he had to do with. `I was at sea
when I was young,' he once said to Jim, when he was a bit `on',
`and a man learns to be neat there.' There was a big chimney outside,
and a lot of leaves and rushes out of a swamp which he
had made Warrigal gather.

`Put your blankets down there, boys, and turn in. You'll see
how the land lies in the morning.' We didn't want asking twice,
Jim's eyes were nigh shut as it was. The sun was up when we woke.

Outside the first thing we saw was father and Starlight talking.
Both of these seemed a bit cranky. `It's a d---- shame,'
we heard Starlight say, as he turned and walked off. `We could have done it
well enough by ourselves.'

`I know what I'm about,' says father, `it's all or none.
What's the use of crying after being in it up to our neck?'

`Some day you'll think different,' says Starlight, looking back at him.

I often remembered it afterwards.

`Well, lads,' says father, looking straight at us, `I wasn't sure
as you'd come. Starlight has been barneying with me about sending for you.
But we've got a big thing on now, and I thought you'd like to be in it.'

`We have come,' says I, pretty short. `Now we're here
what's the play called, and when does the curtain rise? We're on.'
I was riled, vexed at Starlight talking as if we were children,
and thought I'd show as we were men, like a young fool as I was.

`All right,' says father, and he sat down on a log, and began to tell us
how there was any quantity of cattle running at the back
where they were camped -- a good lot strayed and mixed up,
from the last dry season, and had never been mustered for years.
The stockmen hardly ever came out till the autumn musters.
One of the chaps that was in it knew all this side and had told them.
They were going to muster for a month or so, and drive the mob
right through to Adelaide. Store cattle were dear then,
and we could get them off easy there and come back by sea. No one was to know
we were not regular overlanders; and when we'd got the notes in our pockets
it would be a hard matter to trace the cattle or prove that we were the men
that sold 'em.

`How many head do you expect to get?' says Jim.

`A thousand or twelve hundred; half of 'em fat, and two-thirds of them
young cattle.'

`By George! that's something like a haul; but you can't muster
such a lot as that without a yard.'

`I know that,' says father. `We're putting up a yard on a little plain
about a mile from here. When they find it, it'll be an old nest,
and the birds flown.'

`Well, if that ain't the cheekiest thing I ever heard tell of,'
says I laughingly. `To put up a yard at the back of a man's run,
and muster his cattle for him! I never heard the like before,
nor any one else. But suppose the cove or his men come across it?'

`'Tain't no ways likely,' says father. `They're the sleepiest lot of chaps
in this frontage I ever saw. It's hardly worth while "touching" them.
There's no fun in it. It's like shooting pheasants when they ain't preserved.
There's no risk, and when there's no risk there's no pleasure.
Anyway that's my notion.'

`Talking about risks, why didn't you work that Marquis of Lorne racket better?
We saw in the papers that the troopers hunted you so close you had to kill him
in the ranges.'

Father looked over at us and then began to laugh -- not long,
and he broke off short. Laughing wasn't much in his line.

`Killed him, did we? And a horse worth nigh on to two thousand pounds.
You ought to have known your old father better than that.
We did kill A chestnut horse, one we picked out a purpose;
white legs, white knee, short under lip, everything quite regular.
We even fed him for a week on prairie grass, just like the Marquis
had been eating. Bless you, we knew how to work all that.
We deceived Windhall his own self, and he thinks he's pretty smart.
No! the Marquis is all safe -- you know where.'

I opened my eyes and stared at father.

`You've some call to crow if you can work things like that.
How you ever got him away beats me; but not more than how you managed
to keep him hid with a ring of troopers all round you
from every side of the district.'

`We had friends,' father said. `Me and Warrigal done all the travelling
by night. No one but him could have gone afoot, I believe, much less
led a blood horse through the beastly scrub and ranges he showed us.
But the devil himself could not beat him and that little brute Bilbah
in rough country.'

`I believe you,' I said, thinking of our ride yesterday.
`It's quite bad enough to follow him on level ground. But don't you think
our tracks will be easy to follow with a thousand head of cattle before us?
Any fool could do that.'

`It ain't that as I'm looking at,' said father; `of course an old woman
could do it, and knit stockings all the time; but our dart is to be off
and have a month's start before anybody knows they are off the run.
They won't think of mustering before fat cattle takes a bit of a turn.
That won't be for a couple of months yet. Then they may catch us
if they can.'

We had a long talk with Starlight, and what he said came to much the same.
One stockman they had `squared', and he was to stand in.
They had got two or three flash chaps to help muster and drive,
who were to swear they thought we were dealers, and had bought cattle
all right. One or two more were to meet us farther on.
If we could get the cattle together and clear off before
anything was suspected the rest was easy. The yard was nearly up,
and Jim and I wired in and soon finished it. It didn't want
very grand work putting into it as long as it would last our time.
So we put it up roughly, but pretty strong, with pine saplings.
The drawing in was the worst, for we had to `hump' the most of them ourselves.
Jim couldn't help bursting out laughing from time to time.

`It does seem such a jolly cheeky thing,' he said. `Driving off
a mob of cattle on the quiet I've known happen once or twice; but I'm dashed
if ever I heard tell of putting up duffing improvements of a superior class
on a cove's run and clearing off with a thousand drafted cattle,
all quiet and regular, and him pottering about his home-station
and never "dropping" to it no more than if he was in Sydney.'

`People ought to look after their stock closer than they do,' I said.
`It is their fault almost as much as ours. But they are too lazy
to look after their own work, and too miserable to pay a good man
to do it for them. They just get a half-and-half sort of fellow
that'll take low wages and make it up with duffing, and of course
he's not likely to look very sharp after the back country.'

`You're not far away,' says Jim; `but don't you think
they'd have to look precious sharp and get up very early in the morning
to be level with chaps like father and Starlight, let alone Warrigal,
who's as good by night as day? Then there's you and me.
Don't try and make us out better than we are, Dick;
we're all d---- scoundrels, that's the truth of it, and honest men
haven't a chance with us, except in the long run -- except in the long run.
That's where they'll have us, Dick Marston.'

`That's quite a long speech for you, Jim,' I said; `but it don't matter much
that I know of whose fault it is that we're in this duffing racket.
It seems to be our fate, as the chap says in the book.
We'll have a jolly spree in Adelaide if this journey comes out right.
And now let's finish this evening off. To-morrow they're going to yard
the first mob.'

After that we didn't talk much except about the work. Starlight and Warrigal
were out every day and all day. The three new hands were some chaps
who formed part of a gang that did most of the horse-stealing
in that neighbourhood, though they never showed up. The way they managed it
was this. They picked up any good-looking nag or second-class racehorse
that they fell across, and took them to a certain place. There they met
another lot of fellows, who took the horses from them and cleared out
to another colony; at the same time they left the horses they had brought.
So each lot travelled different ways, and were sold in places
where they were quite strange and no one was likely to claim them.

After a man had had a year or two at this kind of work, he was good,
or rather bad, for anything. These young chaps, like us, had done pretty well
at these games, and one of them, falling in with Starlight, had proposed
to him to put up a couple of hundred head of cattle on Outer Back Momberah,
as the run was called; then father and he had seen that a thousand
were as easy to get as a hundred. Of course there was a risky feeling,
but it wasn't such bad fun while it lasted. We were out all day
running in the cattle. The horses were in good wind and condition now;
we had plenty of rations -- flour, tea, and sugar. There was no cart,
but some good packhorses, just the same as if we were a regular station party
on our own run. Father had worked all that before we came.
We had the best of fresh beef and veal too -- you may be sure of that --
there was no stint in that line; and at night we were always sure of a yarn
from Starlight -- that is, if he was in a good humour. Sometimes he wasn't,
and then nobody dared speak to him, not even father.

He was an astonishing man, certainly. Jim and I used to wonder, by the hour,
what he'd been in the old country. He'd been all over the world --
in the Islands and New Zealand; in America, and among Malays
and other strange people that we'd hardly ever heard of.
Such stories as he'd tell us, too, about slaves and wild chiefs
that he'd lived with and gone out to fight with against their enemy.
`People think a great deal of a dead man now and then
in this innocent country,' he said once when the grog was uppermost;
`why, I've seen fifty men killed before breakfast, and in cold blood, too,
chopped up alive, or next thing to it; and a drove of slaves
-- men, women, and children -- as big nearly as our mob,
handed over to a slave-dealer, and driven off in chains
just as you'd start a lot of station cattle. They didn't like it,
going off their run either, poor devils. The women would try
and run back after their pickaninnies when they dropped,
just like that heifer when Warrigal knocked her calf on the head to-day.'
What a man he was! This was something like life, Jim and I thought.
When we'd sold the cattle, if we got 'em down to Adelaide all right,
we'd take a voyage to some foreign country, perhaps, and see sights too.
What a paltry thing working for a pound a week seemed when a rise like this
was to be made!

Well, the long and short of it is that we mustered the cattle
quite comfortably, nobody coming anext or anigh us any more
than if we'd taken the thing by contract. You wouldn't have thought
there was anybody nearer than Bathurst. Everything seemed to be
in our favour. So it was, just at the start. We drafted out
all the worst and weediest of the cattle, besides all the old cows,
and when we counted the mob out we had nearly eleven hundred
first-rate store cattle; lots of fine young bullocks and heifers,
more than half fat -- altogether a prime well-bred mob
that no squatter or dealer could fault in any way if the price was right.
We could afford to sell them for a shade under market price for cash.
Ready money, of course, we were bound to have.

Just as we were starting there was a fine roan bull came running up
with a small mob.

`Cut him out, and beat him back,' says father; `we don't want to be bothered
with the likes of him.'

`Why, I'm dashed if that ain't Hood's imported bull,' says Billy the Boy,
a Monaro native that we had with us. `I know him well. How's he come
to get back? Why, the cove gave two hundred and fifty notes for him
afore he left England, I've heard 'em say.'

`Bring him along,' said Starlight, who came up just then.
`In for a penny, in for a pound. They'll never think of looking for him
on the Coorong, and we'll be there before they miss any cattle
worth talking about.'

So we took `Fifteenth Duke of Cambridge' along with us; a red roan he was,
with a little white about the flank. He wasn't more than four year old.
He'd been brought out from England as a yearling. How he'd worked his way out
to this back part of the run, where a bull of his quality ain't often seen,
nobody could say. But he was a lively active beast, and he'd got
into fine hard fettle with living on saltbush, dry grass, and scrub
for the last few months, so he could travel as well as the others.
I took particular notice of him, from his little waxy horns
to his straight locks and long square quarters. And so I'd need to --
but that came after. He had only a little bit of a private brand
on the shoulder. That was easily faked, and would come out quite different.

Chapter 12

We didn't go straight ahead along any main track to the Lower Murray
and Adelaide exactly. That would have been a little too open and barefaced.
No; we divided the mob into three, and settled where to meet
in about a fortnight. Three men to each mob. Father and Warrigal
took one lot; they had the dog, old Crib, to help them.
He was worth about two men and a boy. Starlight, Jim, and I had another;
and the three stranger chaps another. We'd had a couple of knockabouts
to help with the cooking and stockyard work. They were paid by the job.
They were to stay at the camp for a week, to burn the gunyahs,
knock down the yard, and blind the track as much as they could.

Some of the cattle we'd left behind they drove back and forward
across the track every day for a week. If rain came they were to drop it,
and make their way into the frontage by another road.
If they heard about the job being blown or the police set on our track,
they were to wire to one of the border townships we had to pass.
Weren't we afraid of their selling us? No, not much; they were well paid,
and had often given father and Starlight information before, though they
took care never to show out in the cattle or horse-stealing way themselves.
As long as chaps in our line have money to spend, they can always get
good information and other things, too. It is when the money runs short
that the danger comes in. I don't know whether cattle-duffing
was ever done in New South Wales before on such a large scale,
or whether it will ever be done again. Perhaps not. These wire fences
stop a deal of cross-work; but it was done then, you take my word for it
-- a man's word as hasn't that long to live that it's worth while to lie --
and it all came out right; that is as far as our getting safe over,
selling the cattle, and having the money in our pockets.

We kept on working by all sorts of outside tracks on the main line of road
-- a good deal by night, too -- for the first two or three hundred miles.
After we crossed the Adelaide border we followed the Darling
down to the Murray. We thought we were all right, and got bolder.
Starlight had changed his clothes, and was dressed like a swell --
away on a roughish trip, but still like a swell.

`They were his cattle; he had brought them from one of his stations
on the Narran. He was going to take up country in the Northern Territory.
He expected a friend out from England with a lot more capital.'

Jim and I used to hear him talking like this to some of the squatters
whose runs we passed through, as grave as you please. They used to ask him
to stay all night, but he always said `he didn't like to leave his men.
He made it a practice on the road.' When we got within a fortnight's drive
of Adelaide, he rode in and lived at one of the best hotels.
He gave out that he expected a lot of cattle to arrive, and got a friend
that he'd met in the billiard-room (and couldn't he play surprisin'?)
to introduce him to one of the leading stock agents there.
So he had it all cut and dry, when one day Warrigal and I rode in,
and the boy handed him a letter, touching his hat respectfully,
as he had been learned to do, before a lot of young squatters and other swells
that he was going out to a picnic with.

`My confounded cattle come at last,' he says. `Excuse me
for mentioning business. I began to hope they'd never come;
'pon my soul I did. The time passes so deuced pleasantly here.
Well, they'll all be at the yards to-morrow. You fellows
had all better come and see them sold. There'll be a little lunch,
and perhaps some fizz. You go to the stock agents, Runnimall and Co.;
here's their address, Jack,' he says to me, looking me straight in the eyes.
`They'll send a man to pilot you to the yards; and now off with you,
and don't let me see your face till to-morrow.'

How he carried it off! He cantered away with the rest of the party, as if
he hadn't a thought in the world except about pleasure and honest business.
Nobody couldn't have told that he wasn't just like them other young gentlemen
with only their stock and station to think about, and a little fun
at the races now and then. And what a risk he was running
every minute of his life, he and all the rest of us. I wasn't sorry
to be out of the town again. There were lots of police, too.
Suppose one of them was to say, `Richard Marston, I arrest you for ----'
It hardly mattered what. I felt as if I should have tumbled down
with sheer fright and cowardliness. It's a queer thing you feel like that
off and on. Other times a man has as much pluck in him as if his life
was worth fighting for -- which it isn't.